Who’s Driving – Me or My Habits?

A habit is something you can do without thinking - which is why most of us have so many of them. Frank A. Clark

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. Samuel Johnson

We have 12,000 – 50,000 thoughts per day according to the National Science Foundation, and 90% of those are thoughts we thought yesterday!  Most of those thoughts, especially that 90% are housed in the “habit center” of our brain and they allow us to carry out routine activities and to react and respond in automatic ways.

Our brain is like a computer – you’ve heard that analogy before – how powerful it is, how many connections it makes, etc.  And like your computer which now has a zillion gigabytes of memory, the real working part of the brain which processes new information (learning, decisions, creative endeavors, etc.) is like the RAM in your computer – much smaller and very limited relative to the other storage memory.  Even now, with all of the advances that have been made in computer science, we can still experience our computers FREEZING when we have too many programs open.  And like our brains, sometimes we just run out of space to process information and have to shut down, get rid of some of the details, and the reboot, or regenerate ourselves.

So, to prevent too many brain freezes, our brain make connections between messages and creates a neural pathway which can be called upon to run automatically from the habit center instead of in our working brain.  This frees up our working brain to be able to take in new information and make new connections, new thoughts, new ideas, new solutions and ultimately, new habits of thinking and behaving.

Habits are good things because they allow you to operate on auto-pilot while the less spacious part of your brain makes new connections.  And sometimes auto-pilot works well.  A good example of this is DRIVING:

When you are driving you can do several things at the same time – listen to the radio or a CD, think about where you are going and what you are going to do when you get there, look at the passing scenery, watch for signs or look at directions or listen to those annoying but helpful GPS directions, talk to your passenger….and you don’t ever really think about the mechanics of driving because it is a habit, something you do automatically!

Operating automatically when driving is very productive except when the objective or the context change.  Have you ever found yourself heading for a meeting first thing in the morning and ,whoops, you went on auto-pilot and took your usual route to work, only to end up being late or doing unnatural acts to get back on track?  Or can you remember the first time you ever drove on the left side of the road when you had driven on the right side all of your driving life? Did you white-knuckle it around the roundabouts, and have to give 100% of your attention to turning left or right?  Could you do any of the things we were talking about earlier or were you limited to just focusing on driving and nothing else?  The key is to be aware of when you can react automatically and when you have to make a conscious choice!  To recognize who is driving – you or your habits!

From this example of driving we can take several lessons about how habits impact our ability to get different results in our lives.
1.    When we think things are as they have always been, we go on auto-pilot and may miss opportunities to take a new route which will get us to where we want to go.

2.    Changing habits takes practice until we can create the new patterns and install them in the habit center.  Sometimes that means you are going to have accidents and maybe even fail until you have practiced enough.

3.    Giving up before you have practiced enough will sabotage your getting different results.

4.    You may not be aware of all of your habits until you realize that you are not getting where you want to go.

COACHING REQUEST:

1.  Play with changing some of your obvious habits, just for two or three days and observe what happens to your thinking – put your watch on the opposite wrist, shower your body parts in a different order,  sleep on the opposite side of the bed or sit in a different chair when you eat your meals.

2.  Make a list of the habits that support your accomplishing what matters to you.  And make a list of those habits which get in the way.  What actions can you take to focus on the habits that support you?

3.  If you want to find out with great accuracy how your current habits of thinking impact some of your choices, and maybe even discover a blind spot or two, take the FREE 6 Advisor Assessment by clicking here